Phish tour to stop at Watkins Glen International Aug. 17-19

The drummer for the jam band Phish has been elected to his Maine town's Board of Selectmen. Jon Fishman will take a place on Lincolnville's five-seat board after winning Tuesday's nonpartisan election.
USA TODAY

Trey Anastasio, of Phish, performs at Magnaball at Watkins Glen International in 2015.(Photo: File)

Jam-band favorites Phish will return to Watkins Glen International in August for its third festival at the racetrack.

Tickets for the Aug. 17-19 event, dubbed Curveball, go on sale at noon Friday on the band's website. WGI President Michael Printup expects 50,000 to 60,000 fans to attend each day, with 30,000 to 35,000 camping on site. That number would make it bigger than 2015's Magnaball at the track.

“The excitement is through the roof," Printup said. "We’ve been waiting for this announcement just so we could start bursting at the seams. They’re a special group, and this is their third festival that they’ve held here — the first one was 2011 and the last one was 2015, and now Curveball for 2018. It couldn’t have a better name, and I just can’t wait for August.”

Phish fans welcome the band at Magnaball, their three-day festival in 2015 at Watkins Glen International racetrack.(Photo: SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo)

This will be the 11th multi-night festival Phish will host, and the third in a row at Watkins Glen. Super Ball IX was held July 1-3, 2011 and was the first music festival at the racetrack since Summer Jam — featuring the Grateful Dead, the Band and the Allman Brothers Band — attracted an estimated 600,000 fans in 1973. Magnaball followed four years later on Aug. 21-23, 2015.

Other Phish festivals have been held at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine; the former Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York; Indio, California; and also Big Cypress Indian Reservation in southern Florida, where the band played a seven-plus-hour set starting on Dec. 31, 1999 and ending in the early hours of New Year’s 2000.

WGI will have two weeks between its final racing event of the season in early August and the Curveball festival, Printup said. That might seem like a short window of time, but the band can bring equipment to Watkins Glen early and be ready to set up as soon as racing has finished. In 2015, 10 to 15 semi-trailers lined up on nearby property that WGI owns before preparations began.

“We’ve been meeting with [Phish organizers] since September of last year," Printup said. "They’ve made a bunch of trips up here, and we’ve been logistically planning and laying out and fine-tuning. The good thing is, they’ve done it before and so have we.”

The requirements for a music festival like Curveball aren't so different than other events at WGI, he added: “Our team is so well equipped at putting on anything from the NASCAR events to IMSA to the Wine Festival to opening day. We deal with the small and big details, and we work with fire departments, police departments, state police and the governor’s office just to communicate that we’re holding these big events.”

The Doctor Eustachian B. Ear Now Institute, created by Torin Porter of Glover, Vermont, is a grouping of Òear plants connected by underground tubers.Ó Phish festival visitors can speak into one tube and heard in another tube. Some folks even ÒcleanedÓ the tubes with oversized swabs.
SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo

The Doctor Eustachian B. Ear Now Institute, created by Torin Porter of Glover, Vermont, is a grouping of “ear plants connected by underground tubers.” Phish festival visitors can speak into one tube and heard in another tube. Some folks even “cleaned” the tubes with oversized swabs.
SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo

The Doctor Eustachian B. Ear Now Institute, created by Torin Porter of Glover, Vermont, is a grouping of “ear plants connected by underground tubers.” Phish festival visitors can speak into one tube and heard in another tube. Some folks even “cleaned” the tubes with oversized swabs.
SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo

The Doctor Eustachian B. Ear Now Institute, created by Torin Porter of Glover, Vermont, is a grouping of “ear plants connected by underground tubers.” Phish festival visitors can speak into one tube and heard in another tube. Some folks even “cleaned” the tubes with oversized swabs.
SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo

Ryan Echausse of Glen Head, Long Island, plays in the cornhole tournament Friday at the start of the Phish festival weekend at Watkins Glen International. Behind him people line up to buy items in the merchandise tent and music store.
SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo

Still, a festival like Curveball can triple or quadruple the population of Schuyler County.

“When you have a county that’s only 18,500 people, we could fit the whole county in there many times over in terms of population," Printup said. "It’s nice to be part of this community with all of the attributes that we have here, from the lakes to the wineries to the state parks — it’s so nice. This is just another — now I can say it — curveball to the summer.”

If You Go

• Tickets: On sale Friday (March 2) at noon on phish.com. General admission camping pass for all three days is $250. Car camping pass is $60 for a Thursday arrival or $80 for a Wednesday arrival. RV camping pass is $200 for a Thursday arrival or $220 for a Wednesday arrival. Other packages are available for tent rental, RV rental and hotel accommodations.

Arin Christensen celebrates getting ticket outside Gate 1 Thursday afternoon as cars line up to get into Watkins Glen International Thursday afternoon for the Phish Magnaball festival. Christensen had biked over from Watkins Glen State Park where he had spent the night.
SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo

A security guard walks in front of the on stageside speakers Friday afternoon at the Phish Magnaball festival at Watkins Glen International. The stage is set up at the mid point of the backstretch facing north.
SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo